SuAside

i've gone on a wardrive through a few cityblocks of Gent a good while back, with some schoolbuddies for educational purposes (we were all studying IT with a specialisation in Networks at the time) and you simply wouldn't believe how many wireless hotspots are totally unsecured or take less than 5 minutes to break.

on a sidenote however, i'd also like to point out that a great many ADSL connections without wireless are quite easy to abuse as well, due to bad configuration of the routers. do a trace, locate the router, retrieve any information you can (pref model + brand), look up default passwords on the web (like admin/admin, but also some brandspecific ones), access the router (if it can be accessed from the outside, which it often is) and retrieve the connection information from the router.
once you've done that, simply put that info in another DSL router that you want to use (preferably not at home obviously, since there is always a slim chance of a company getting wise & tracing you) & leech the traffic from the stolen account. one would think an adsl account is bound to a particular telephone line, but it usually isn't.

i, of course, do NOT advice nor support this course of action, so do not try this at home, but i do know for a fact this works.

(i've left out some harmful information, but you get the idea)

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Computed by a Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13Ghz @ 3.2Ghz) kept frosty by a Zalman CNPS9700 on an Asus P5W DH Deluxe, fed by 2x 1Gb OCZ PC2-6400 4-4-4-12 @ 1600FSB 1:1 and puked back out by a MSI RX1950Pro.

jmke

default router config of those bought in shops don't allow remote access

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SuAside

most of respectable brands don't indeed. however there is a great deal of trash out there that does (and that trash is usually bought by people who have no idea about security and hence don't know how to disable it or change passwords).

take my word for it, dude. i've seen it done by a buddy of mine. found & cracked 3 in half an hour.

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Computed by a Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13Ghz @ 3.2Ghz) kept frosty by a Zalman CNPS9700 on an Asus P5W DH Deluxe, fed by 2x 1Gb OCZ PC2-6400 4-4-4-12 @ 1600FSB 1:1 and puked back out by a MSI RX1950Pro.

piotke

apple ibook + kissmac

any WEP / WPA network cracked in <5 minutes

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Kougar

At those kinds of speeds I would agree with you!

The Homeplug standard is rated for 200mb/s though. No range or drop issues personally, and the protocol specs are only going up.

jmke

they may be rated that high, but that best case scenario in a perfect setup in real world these home plugs are ridiculously overpriced for the poor quality you get

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jort

My wireless gear;

proxim Orinoco(atheros) 802 a/b/g Gold combo card with external antenna + 6dbi



Perfect wardriving gear lol

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watercooling, chilled water,direct phase change, cascade, custom modding

Jay-Jay

A lot of blablabla ranting...

The average pc that is connected to inet is even more vulnerable then worrying about WEP vulnerabilities. Just a load of crap to scare people with no awareness of security whatsoever. Seems to be a new trend nowadays.

I know enough about security, and certainly about wifi-security to confirm you that an average person (about 99% of the world) will not succees in cracking your WEP encryption. And the few people that might actually be able to do so would only do it for the thrill. If they even bother at all. Once you know the technique there is no thrill in it to perform it over and over. And if they need a quick connection they might as well take one of the other 50% of the completely unsecured connections.

Up until now, I've had dozens of conversations with people claiming that only fools use WEP and that WEP is so unreliable. Well duh, it has some serious flaws.(you should not tell me, I've been studying this stuff for years now) But then the conversation continues and I ask them HOW to crack WEP, and until now 3 people actally succeeded to explain a succesful technique to me. The rest just heard or read about the flaws, and spread the word without actually knowing what they are talking about. Promiscuous what? Atheros or Prism chipset? kismet? Linux?

And lolzors on the youtube film. "They bought some readily available software". Who would actually be so stupid to buy software when kismet, airodump and aircrack are free?

I hate it when people try to act smart on stuff they only vaguely heard of

Btw Piotke: I partly have to disagree on your statement. WEP is indeed hackable in a couple of minutes, but only when there is someone actually connected to the network that you can deauth, or when someone is authenticating on the moment that you are already sniffing. In all other cases I would like to see you get access in anything less then a couple of days of collecting IV packets.
And for WPA: I fully agree that WPA CAN be easily cracked, but only when using WPA-PSK with a very simple passphrase. (so not a flaw in WPA but user stupidity) I would like to see you do this in 5 minutes with for example a randomly-generated passphrase of 20 characters. Or do you just happen to have the full Rainbow-table set ready? Or lets make it challenging. WPA-TLS with a RADIUS implementation behind it? You wouldn't even have enough time to type in your airocrack command before the keys dynamically change again.

I am not saying that you do not know what you are saying, and I am fully aware that 95% of the wireless networks are indeed hackable within 5 minutes, but I just disagree on your statement that ANY WEP or WPA protected network is hackable in a short amount of time.


Oh yeah, just for closure: WEP actually stands for WIRED equivalent privacy. If you are really concerned about this, just think about the fact that a standard wired network is 10 times less secure than a wireless network with WEP. All you need in a wired environment is a wall plug or a wire-cutter...

Edited 4 times due to sleepy head and terrible grammatical mistakes...

geoffrey

Today's situation: 2 pc's in LAN, cross cable connected. ADSL connection with USB modem.

Tomorrow's situation: same 2 pc's in lan wich must have high bandwidth + laptop wich has enough with low bandwith (and has lot's of personal files that I don't want my neighbours to have). I want to keep the ADSL connection.

Best thing to solve this regarding this thread: ADSL router with the 2 pc's connected with a straight cable + the laptop connected wireless (but with lots of security even if it does slow down your connection).
Does this thing exist? Got better idea's?

Jay-Jay

Is indeed the easiest solution. And with a decent WPA passphrase you really shouldn't have to bother about security. Heck, even with WEP, but if the equipment supports better security and a bit of bandwith reduction isn't an issue, go for the WPA.